These paintings really are extraordinary. Herzog says we haven’t really bettered them in over 30,000 years. He also goes on to say the duplication of drawn/painted lines (seen in the legs and heads of animals) was an attempt to suggest motion – an early ‘cinematographic’ technique in other words. That’s amazing, given how old they are. And it’s easy to see how alive, and realistic, these painted animals would have appeared in the light of flickering oil lamps (no doubt enhanced even further by the uneven surface on which they were executed).

Marcel Duchamp used the duplication of lines technique to suggest motion in his Nude Descending a Staircase. There’s a Taoist temple in China with a mural that shows a court official whose eyes are painted using the duplication technique, as if to suggest he’s lowering them in the presence of the emperor. In Kyoto National Museum there’s a life-size wooden sculpture of a standing Bodhisattva; the face is split vertically down the centre to reveal an identical face within, and this second face is again split vertically to reveal a third face; not just motion here but perhaps something even more awe-inspiring... though the 32,000 year old Chauvet cave paintings are pretty mind-blowing by any standards!